Taiwan Indigenous Mythology: Oral Epics from the Flood to the Creation

30-Second Overview: Taiwan, an island of geographic diversity, is also a treasury of cultural mythology. From the Atayal's rock-splitting creation to the Bunun's legend of shooting the sun, from the Amis's great flood and sibling marriage to the Atayal's flood sacrifice — these oral epics not only shaped each ethnic group's cosmology but reflect their profound interactions with and adaptive wisdom toward the natural environment. These myths are indispensable keys to understanding Taiwan's indigenous cultures.

"Long, long ago, on a mountain there was a very large boulder... One day this great boulder suddenly cracked open... with a thunderous boom... and from it suddenly emerged a pair of siblings..."¹ This is not the opening of a fairy tale — it is the creation myth that the Atayal people of Taiwan have passed down for millennia. On this land of Taiwan, the Austronesian indigenous peoples have woven countless epics about creation, flood, and human-divine interaction through their rich and varied oral literatures. These myths are not merely ancient legends — they are the living fossils of ethnic memory, carrying the wisdom and worldview of peoples living in harmony with nature.

The Splitting Rock: The Atayal Source of Creation

The Atayal are among the indigenous peoples of Taiwan who preserve a "rock-splitting creation" myth. According to tradition, near the Ruian (瑞岩) tribal settlement in Renai Township, Nantou County, there is a great rock, called "Pinsbukan" in the Atayal language — meaning "the place where the rock split." In the ancient legend, this great rock one day suddenly cracked open, and from within emerged a man and a woman, who became the ancestors of the Atayal people. Yet another version says that when the rock split, two men and one woman emerged; one of the men, finding the world boring, walked back into the rock, and the remaining pair of man and woman then multiplied to produce descendants.² This myth not only explains the origin of the people but symbolizes the inseparable bond between Atayal people and the land.

📝 Curator's Note: The Atayal rock-splitting myth stands in stark contrast to Western narratives of "creation from clay" or "God creating humanity" — it emphasizes life bursting forth from the hard substance of nature, filled with a primordial and tenacious vitality.

The Great Flood: A Shared Memory of an Island People

Among Taiwan's indigenous peoples, the "great flood" is a universal and important theme in mythology — almost every ethnic group has related legends. This reflects not only Taiwan's geography of many typhoons and heavy rains, but may also represent a shared memory of an ancient disaster. Though details vary, their core all revolves around how humanity survived a great catastrophe, rebuilt home, and redefined its relationship with nature in the process.

Amis: Sibling Marriage and the Newborn White Stone

The Amis flood legend takes many forms, and the story of the Malan tribe in Taitung is particularly moving. According to tradition, a severe earthquake occurred in ancient times, and hot springs from the earth's depths formed a flood that submerged the land. Only a pair of siblings survived by floating away on a wooden mortar. The elder sister, exhausted during the journey, turned into a stone figure; the remaining sibling pair, to continue human life, married with the permission of the sun. However, the child they first produced was a monster. Guided by the moon, they tried again with a straw mat between them, but gave birth only to a white stone. The moon advised them to preserve the white stone, and after several days, four children were born from the stone. Two of them who were barefoot multiplied to become the ancestors of humanity, while the other two who wore shoes became the ancestors of the Han Chinese.³

Bunun: The Giant Snake Blocking the Stream and Transmitting Fire

The Bunun flood legend incorporates the assistance of animals. According to tradition, a giant snake blocked a stream, causing flooding that submerged the land. The Bunun fled to Mount Jade (Yushan) to take refuge, but had no fire to cook food. After toads and birds failed to obtain fire, the Kaipisi bird finally succeeded in bringing back a fire source. Then a large crab fought the giant snake, cutting open its belly, and the floodwaters gradually receded. The Bunun thereafter made a vow never to kill toads or Kaipisi birds, to thank them for their contributions.⁴

Atayal: Sacrifice and Mountain Refuge

The Atayal flood legend is a classic "mountain-refuge" type. Seven days and nights of unceasing heavy rain caused floods that swept away homes. The people fled to Mount Dabajian (大霸尖山) to take refuge. To appease the gods' anger, the people first sacrificed a dog and then an elderly woman, but the floodwaters did not recede and in fact rose higher. Finally, the tribal leader reluctantly offered his most beautiful daughter as a sacrifice (another version says that the pair of siblings who had angered the spirits were thrown into the water), and the floodwaters quickly receded, forming the current landscape of high and low mountains.⁵

Shooting the Sun: The Bunun Legend of Hunting the Solar

The Bunun sun-shooting myth is another legend full of power and reflection. According to tradition, in ancient times two suns alternated in illuminating the earth, causing intolerable heat and suffering for all living creatures. A father and son, to save their people, took up their bows and arrows and set out on a journey. Along the way they planted pomelo and orange trees as trail markers, and after many decades finally reached the place where the sun dwells. After several failed attempts to avoid the intense light, they used the heat-resistant properties of mountain palm leaves to successfully shoot out the right eye of one of the suns.⁶

The wounded sun-brother endured the pain to ask why; the father explained the suffering of the people from the heat, and how the children had become lizards. The sun-brother sympathized with their plight and promised that henceforth there would be only one sun, while the other would become the moon, bringing the alternation of day and night. He also taught the father and son how to plant millet according to the waxing and waning of the moon, and asked them to perform rituals. The sun-brother then returned to the sky, becoming the gentle and bright moon in the night sky. The father and son returned to the tribe carrying the seeds the moon had taught them; the father had already died of old age, and the son followed the pomelo and orange trees they had planted back to the tribe, by then a white-haired old man.⁶

📝 Curator's Note: The Bunun sun-shooting myth is not merely a display of heroism — at a deeper level it reveals the process of humanity moving from conflict with nature toward reconciliation, and a profound understanding of life's rhythms.

The Contemporary Resonance of Mythology

Taiwan's indigenous myths are not only memories of the past — they continue to hold significant meaning in contemporary society. These stories are not only sources of inspiration for literature and artistic creation but are also the core of ethnic identity and cultural transmission. Through mythology, we can glimpse how indigenous peoples understood the world, explained the origin of life, faced catastrophe, and established social norms and moral values. They remind us that even amid the tides of modernization, there is ancient wisdom still worth learning and cherishing.

These mythological stories, with their distinctive narrative approaches and rich imagination, add profound cultural depth to the land of Taiwan. They are an important component of Taiwan's diverse cultures, and a crucial bridge connecting past to present, humanity to nature.

"Myths and legends are transmitted orally, passed from generation to generation, with no definitive text; moreover, as tribes developed separately, their languages and ways of life evolved differently, and their myths and legends changed accordingly."⁷ This sentence precisely captures the vitality and variability of Taiwan's indigenous mythology. They are not rigid texts but a living culture continuously interpreted through time and the development of peoples.

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